


Argeiphontes

by Scytale



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Don't Have to Know Canon, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, POV First Person, Pre-Canon, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 13:37:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15752787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scytale/pseuds/Scytale
Summary: Zeus comes to Hermes for a favor.A retelling of the slaying of Argus, set in the world of Hadestown.





	Argeiphontes

Zeus sauntered into my railroad station like he owned it. In a certain sense, I supposed he did. Since he didn't have his lightning bolt with him, I figured he was trying to keep a low profile. Since he also wore an expensive suit and rings on his fingers, he probably also wasn't trying too hard.

"What brings you here?" I asked.

He looked amused by the question. "The same thing that brought everybody else, Hermes. Freedom, a journey, a second chance. The usual."

I snorted. "As if the king of Olympus needs a train station for that."

"It's for somebody else," he said.

The dark and thick longing in his voice clued me in.

"Let me guess," I said. "A woman."

Zeus nodded. "Come for a drive with me. I'll tell you about it on the way."

I followed him to a sleek, silver Rolls-Royce parked by the station. After I took the passenger seat, he started the car. It rolled and purred beneath us like a dream.

"My wife has a girl locked up in a country house of hers," he said. "She thinks the girl's my mistress."

It would be a waste of breath to ask if Hera was wrong.

"You want me to break the girl out for you," I said.

He nodded. "Her name's Io. It shouldn't be too hard for you. You've been stealing since you were in diapers."

"Does the girl have guards?"

"Just one man. One of my wife's foot soldiers, good in a fight."

I chewed my lip thoughtfully.

Outside the window, the city was grey and joyless. The trees stood bare and crooked, dwarfed by the unending rows of tall, aging building. Summer had already gone underground for the year. The lines for the train down below would be getting long soon, but for now, the trains could run without me. I could take a few days off. It never hurt to have the king of Olympus happy with you, and I liked to disappoint his wife.

"I'll see what I can do," I said.

He smiled. "Good."

He rattled off instructions for how to find Hera's country house and the safehouse he wanted the girl at.

"When you get her," he said, once he'd given me orders to his satisfaction. "Tell the girl none of this will happen again. From now on, I'll keep her safe."

* * *

I stopped the car at a two-story house.  The house must have been beautiful once, but now it sagged with the sickness of a neglected animal. White paint peeled off the walls, one of the roof tiles had fallen off, and dead weeds grew in the yard. The curtains on the windows were drawn. With my briefcase in hand, I headed up the porch and knocked.

A man opened the door. He was so tall he had to hunch to keep his head from touching the top of the doorway, and his arms bulged with muscle.

Argus, I assumed. I hadn't expected him to be a bona-fide giant. You didn't see them around any more, not since the last war.

He glowered at me, black eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"You're a salesman," he said. His deep voice sounded like grinding rocks.  "I don't want your snake oil."

I gave him a winning smile. "Sure, I'm a salesman. But there's nothing wrong with that, or with snake oil. I've known some fine snakes."

He looked unamused. "Beat it."

He shut the door in my face.

I set the briefcase out of the way and counted to five in my head. Then, I rapped against the door again.

Argus didn't answer, so I kept knocking. When the door finally opened, a scowl contorted his face. There was a dark, dangerous look in his eyes.

"You haven't even seen what I'm selling," I said. "Come on, brother -- "

His fist rammed into my face. I stumbled back, ears ringing. He was on me, hands around my collar. I slammed into the wall.

"I'm not your brother, little man," Argus said, leaning close to me. I could smell sour wine and something rotting on his breath. "I got brothers, and you aren't good enough to lick their boots."

He must not have liked the look on my face, because he struck me.

I tasted blood.

"Say it," he said. "Say you're not good enough to lick my brothers' boots."

"I don't deserve to lick your brother's boots," I said.

His grip relaxed.

I grinned at him. "And you aren't fit to lick mine, jackass."

He shoved me to the side. My back hit the ground. He kicked me in the gut. Crying out, I convulsed. The blows kept coming. He didn't see me any more. I was every boy who'd ever made fun of him, every man he'd seen advance in the ranks ahead of him, every reason he was stuck in the middle of nowhere, trusted enough to guard a prisoner but not valued enough to call the shots. And unlike the rest of them, I was here for him to rough up.

I figured he'd only stop once he was sure he'd humiliated me, so I tried to give him what he wanted, singing a song of begging and pleading.

 

He slowed down only when I'd run out of words and gave me a final kick. "You got anything more to say?"

I was curled until a fetal position, trying to protect my head and my stomach. Raising my head, I watched him with the one eye that hadn't swollen shut. I shook my head, blood dripping down my face.

Now that he'd gotten the better of me, he had relaxed, smiling to himself. He wasn't even breathing hard as he turned back to the door. Then he noticed the briefcase, sitting untouched on the porch. "This is mine, now. I'm guessing you don't have any objections."

I could barely lift my head.

Argus smirked. "Didn't think so."

He lifted the briefcase. Before he headed inside, he looked back at me. "If I see you around here again, I'll kill you."

My tongue flicked over a loose tooth. I opened my mouth and croaked. "You won't."

* * *

I limped back to the house at nightfall. This time, I introduced the locks to the picks in my coat pocket. The tumblers clicked a soft welcome.

I stepped inside and turned on the lights. Argus sprawled on the living room couch. White foam clung to his mouth and dribbled from his nose. A whiskey bottle lay broken on the ground beside him, amber liquid soaking into the carpet. My suitcase lay open on the ground. He hadn't been able to resist taking a look through it, and he'd found the whiskey I'd laced with snake's poison. He'd probably died fast.

I approached him. His mouth hung slack and his wide eyes stared sightlessly upward. He looked befuddled.

I shook my head. "No," I said. "It doesn't make any sense to me either, brother."

I closed his eyes for him. Then, I emptied his pockets of his keys and wallets, took his Colt, and headed upstairs to find the girl.

* * *

One of the upstairs doors was locked. I found the right key on Argus's keychain.

The door opened into a bedroom, though there was no furniture except a single cot in the center of the room.

On the cot sat a girl, about eighteen and pretty.

She rose, staring at me. "Who the hell are you?"

She had a low, musical voice, the words rounded by the accent of the hill country. A piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Zeus had grown up in the hills a long time ago. Of course, he'd loved this girl. One word from her and his heart would have burned for her, for the days when he'd been a boy, drinking goat's milk from bare hands and teasing the shepherds' daughters.

"The name's Hermes," I said. "Zeus sent me to get you out."

Her eyes flashed with surprise. "Zeus sent you." She shook her head, her gaze sweeping over my black eye and swollen face. "You look like shit."

"But I'm here."

She frowned. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"Well, I've gone to some effort rescuing you." I said. "Hera's not going to be happy. You think I'd risk that without the backing of an Olympian?"

She frozen when I said Hera's name. Then she studied me with an expression that put me in mind of an alley cat that wasn't sure if she was going to get fed or get a kick.

"All right," she said at last.

I motioned toward the door. "Let's go, then."

When we reached the living room, the girl gasped at the sight of the dead man. She came to a stop, mesmerized by the sight.

Her eyes fell on the broken bottle. Then, she picked the bottle up by the neck and rammed the jagged edge into the dead man's face. Something had tumbled freed inside of her. Her eyes bright with rage, she cursed at the dead man and twisted that glass in his face over and over until his face was a ruin.

Finally, she slumped. She looked at me defiantly and said, "He deserved that."

"I don't doubt you," I said. I nodded at the broken bottle. "Put that down and we'll be on our way."

She didn't move.

"Zeus sent me," I reminded her.

Her eyes flitted to the door. Calculation flickered in her eyes, but then she relaxed. After all, I had the Colt, and she had nowhere to go.

She tossed the bottle away. The glass shattered against the wall and rained down.

She said, "You can't be any worse than this."

* * *

Io sat with her hands folded in her lap, strung tight as a piano string. She watched the country road go by as I drove.

"Zeus wants me to tell you that he'll keep you safe," I said.

She made a choked sound. "That's rich, since he's the one who gave me to Hera."

I blinked.

She gave a bark of bitter laughter. "He didn't tell you, did he? I wouldn't be in this mess if he hadn't told me to meet him at a party...and when I did, the party turned out to just be him and Argus. None of his promises to me meant a thing once his wife got involved."

When I thought about it, I wasn't surprised. Zeus might have loved this girl. But he had been a king since before she was born, and he would move heaven and earth for his throne. When his queen had asked for a sacrifice to keep the peace, he'd delivered her.

At least, he'd regretted it enough to send me after her.

"Do you believe his newest promise?" I asked.

She looked down at her hands. "I guess I have to, don't I?" she said softly. "There's nowhere else to go. Hera's not going to leave me alone, and he won't either if I run from him. I've heard what happens to the girls who run."

She tilted her head back, cradling her hands over her stomach, like a wall between herself and the world.

Or maybe it wasn't that.

"It's not you that you want to protect, is it?" I asked.

Her head spun toward me. She drew in a sharp breath. Then she looked down and brushed her fingertips against her stomach, the way you would touch something that awed you with its preciousness and terrified you with the thought of breaking it.

"No," she said, almost too quietly to hear. "It's not me I'm worried about."

* * *

I stopped the car off the highway in a small town. Across the road was the town's train station, humble enough that there were only two platforms. It was dawn, but people already lined up at the station like ants, hunched over in dark coats to protect themselves from the chill. Above them, the sky glowed with the playful rose and violet hues of dawn, but not one of them looked up as they shuffled defeatedly onto the train.

"Why are we stopping?" Io asked.

"I figured we should talk," I said. "Zeus wants me to escort you back to Olympus. I can do that. But it seems to me we're at a crossroads."

I held a yellow ticket out to her.

Her brow furrowed in confusion, she took it and turned it over. "It doesn't have a destination on it."

"Conductor's special. That ticket can get you on any train, take you anywhere.".

She gave me a searching look.

"You want me to run away from Zeus?" she asked incredulously.

"There are places out there that haven't even heard of our gods," I said. "The roads to get there are long and dangerous, but you know better than to think going back to Zeus will be any safer."

Her eyes settled longingly on the train in the station. Then, she shook herself and looked back at me.

"Is this _his_ idea?" she asked. "A test?"

I shook my head. "I swear by the river Styx, that this isn't a trick or a trap, Io. It's a choice, and it's yours to make."

She must have known the worth of that oath, because her head jerked in a nod. She let out a shaking breath. "Then I'm not going back."

I tossed her Argus's wallet. "Take this, then."

She looked through it. "That's a lot of money."

"Hera pays her soldiers well. It'll last you a while if you're careful." I said. I smiled at her. "Take care of my new sibling for me."

Io drew in a sharp breath in surprise. She opened her mouth to ask a question, but I shook my head. "You'll miss your train."

Her face hardened with determination, and she nodded. "Thank you."

Then she opened the door and ran for the train. The last I saw of her, she was at the end of the line, shivering in the cold and hunched over like the rest of the people. But before she boarded, she looked up at the dawn.

* * *

Hera swept into the bar, the peacock feather in her hat bobbing. It was a new hat, and it could probably buy the bar we were in.

She leant against the counter beside me and lit a cigarette.  Silence spread around, the other patrons all suddenly finding reasons to stay silent and stare at their drinks.

Hera took a drag of her cigarette, blowing out the smoke through ruby lips. The end of her cigarette glowed like a star.

"I suppose you're proud of yourself," she said.

I set down my beer. "I usually am."

"You stole from me. There's no point to being coy. Zeus told me everything," she said. Her lips curved in a hard smile. "He's not too pleased with you himself."

"I can't imagine why," I said. "I gave him exactly what he asked for."

"Don't play games, Hermes. Tell me where she is."

I shrugged. "She could be at the ends of the earth for all I know. I gave her a golden ticket. She'll be out of your reach, if she's smart."

"Of course she's smart," Hera snapped. "She used to work for me."

That was news to me, but I didn't pause.

"Then why don't you cut her some slack?" I asked. "Come on, Hera, this story's getting old. You kill Zeus's lovers or hound them to the end of the earth. He finds a new one. The cycle continues. On and on..."

Her lips thinned. "An insult to me must be answered."

I tilted my head. "But aren't you tired of it?"

Hera didn't answer. She took another drag of the cigarette.

"You didn't give her back to him," she said at last. "And I did like the girl. I won't look for her too hard."

She stubbed her cigarette in my beer. It floated there in my drink, the flame snuffing out.

"Goodbye, Hermes," she said pleasantly. "I'll have her hung from a meat hook if I see her around my husband again."

* * *

A few years later, an envelope with no return address came to my door. Inside was a photo of two toddlers, a boy and a girl, smiling  and reaching chubby hands toward the photographer. They looked like their mother, except around the eyes.

I found writing on the back of the photograph.

_We found a place. I won't tell you their names, but I'll tell them about you._

Sometimes, when the nights are dark and the songs too sad, I pull out that photograph. I pour myself some wine and raise a cup to my brother and sister in distant lands, to the journeys they've completed and the adventures they'll surely have in the future.

After all, no child of my father's ever lives an uneventful life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wonderful sicklyscribe for being friend, emotional support, and beta-ing the initial draft. All blemishes and errors are my own. <3


End file.
